The organization’s most significant and successful method of countering child abuse is by working directly with at-risk parents through its signature program, the Exchange Parent Aide home visitation model. Through coordination with a nationwide network of community-based Exchange Club Child Abuse Prevention Centers, the program has helped more than 691,120 families break the cycle of violence, thus creating safer homes for more than 1,727,800 children.

Exchange Parent Aide evolved from the knowledge and experience of the dynamics surrounding child abuse and neglect. It is based on the work of Sharon Pallone in Little Rock, Arkansas, as well as research and concepts first introduced by Drs. Ray Helfer and Henry Kempe, 1960s pioneers in the field. Their leading research on the battered child syndrome expressed belief that most parents who abuse their children are not psychotic and were likely to have been abused themselves as children. Most abusive parents grew up without positive role models for good parenting and often have difficulty developing healthy and trusting relationships.

To ensure compliance and current practices associated with the model, Exchange provides training, accreditation, technical support, development and management guidance, and other supportive services to sites utilizing the Exchange Parent Aide program.

Exchange Parent Aides act as mentors and provide intensive support, information, and modeling of effective parenting — all in the home of the family. Services are family centered and focus on:

Parental resilience is developed through teaching problem solving skills, modeling effective parenting, providing 24/7 support and referrals to services.

Knowledge of parenting and child development is encouraged and developed through sharing skills and modeling strategies. Individualized help is provided in the home with the children.

Social connections are developed and fostered through social-support, building the individual relationship and connecting the parents to others through group meetings, activities, and referrals.

Social-emotional competence of children is developed through strengthening of the nurturing capabilities of the family; interaction of parents with the children is observed and modeling is provided for support of the children’s competence.

Ensuring safety of the children, including attention to medical, dental, and mental health care needs, as well as safe housing and freedom from child abuse, neglect, and domestic violence.

As seen in Temple Telegram April 29. Story by Janice Gibbs, Telegram Staff

Nancy LeChuga was a foster parent for a while without really knowing it.

LeChuga was one of six speakers at the Foster Care Conference held Friday for foster parents and those who serve those families and children.

LeChuga, a primary prevention specialist at Aware Central Texas, whose mission is the prevention of child abuse, neglect and family violence, said that when looking back at her time as a foster parent she remembered how hard it could be.

She took in a sibling group of three, not as a foster parent but someone who wanted to help the children.

“I didn’t know the severity of their abuse, I just jumped in,” LeChuga said.

Fostering is a calling, she said. There is a price in time and emotion.

After some time and the building up of trust, the children began to open up about what they had been through.

The trauma had been severe and manifested itself as psychosis in one of the children, LeChuga said.

In another case, the mother was selling her child for drugs.

“Talk about anger issues,” she said. “When they have a hard time with authority it’s difficult. The nicer I tried to be the harder it was to win him over.”

There are parents who use their kids for sexual pleasure; the trauma and anger is devastating to witness, LeChuga said.

“We know what you do for these children is priceless, standing in the gap for these children,” she told the parents and advocates for foster children.

LeChuga and her husband took in a child who was a month old, weighed four pounds and had a black eye.

“I met him at a foster family Thanksgiving dinner and my husband and I tried to sooth him so he would quit crying,” she said. “We didn’t know he cried all the time.”

The next day the LeChugas were asked to take him on and she was thrilled to join the mommy club.

They found out his parents were both HIV positive and his medications made him ill.

In the first year, there were 25 visits to the emergency department.

“You really have to watch what you pray for,” she said.

LeChuga said people would look at him and ask what was wrong.

“I didn’t see anything, to me he was perfect,” she said.

They found out he was not infected with HIV and by the second year the parents’ rights were terminated and the LeChugas decided to adopt.

“We were so happy, and then we got the phone call telling us an aunt in Oklahoma wanted to raise him,” she said.

For the next six months LeChuga said she learned how to let go.

“I held him a little closer and I held him a little longer,” she said.

They went to Waco to meet the family where the child’s uncle told the LeChugas that God had told him to leave the child with them.

“I know many foster families outcomes are not as happy as mine,” LeChuga said. “I know the pain and suffering. I know when you love, you love with everything you have. And when you have to let go, you know you are a part of that child’s life and did what you needed to for them to have the best life moving forward.”

LeChuga’s son is now six years old and was just diagnosed with autism, which is just another adventure.

“He’s healthy and happy and we have a good relationship with his family,” she said.